Google has made several updates to the Merchant Center product data specifications. Some changes took effect on April 14, 2026, while others took effect on June 30, 2026, and January 31, 2027.
(1) April 14 Changes:
New Shipping Attributes: Google is adding additional product-level shipping options, replicating existing account-level functionality. This includes a new “handling_cutoff_time” attribute to set a daily time frame for processing online orders, as well as a new “minimum order value” attribute to specify the minimum spend required to purchase and ship an order.
Google is also adding new “lead program label” and “lead level label” subattributes to the shipping attribute to allow merchants to specify shipping benefits for loyal customers for individual products.
New Video Link Attribute: Google is announcing a new optional video link attribute that will allow sellers to submit links to videos of their products. These videos can help showcase products in more detail, including how to use them, or from different angles, and will be used to improve product visibility on Google.
Sellers can begin submitting their videos using this new attribute now. However, serving, as well as policy and quality validation, will not begin until June 30, 2026. Technical validation errors will be flagged starting April 14, 2026.
(2) Changes on June 30, 2026:
Serving, policy, and quality checks begin for the new video link attribute [video_link]: Starting June 30, 2026, videos submitted using the video link attribute [video_link] will be eligible for serving. At the same time, Google will begin flagging any policy or quality warnings or errors for these videos.
Policy or quality errors in your videos will prevent them from serving, but will not affect the associated offer. Check the “Needs Attention” section of your Merchant Center account to see if there are any issues with your videos.
(3) Changes effective January 31, 2027:
Updated image size requirements for image link and additional image link attributes: To ensure the best shopping experience, Google is increasing the minimum resolution for images submitted with image link and additional image link attributes to 500×500 pixels for all product categories and marketing methods.
Starting April 14, 2026, Google will begin issuing warnings in Merchant Center for images that do not meet the updated minimum resolution requirement. This measure will go into effect on January 31, 2027.
To view the products affected by this change, go to the “Needs Attention” section of your Merchant Center account and click “View History.” On the side of the page, look for the “Image too small for upcoming enforcement” warning.
Google will also begin optimizing some images smaller than 500 x 500 pixels using near-identical high-resolution images or through AI-based upscaling of the original image. Importantly, these optimized images will meet the new requirements and prevent product rejection without any action on your part.
Optimized images will be marked with a notice in the “Needs Attention” section of Merchant Center for easy identification. To update an optimized image, you can submit a new image larger than 500 x 500 pixels to the product data source.
Source: https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/16989427